Music and Womb Sounds Help Improve Preemies' Health

by Sharon Mazel on January 29, 2015

Sharon Mazel

About the Author

Sharon Mazel is a journalist and mom to four girls. She works with Heidi Murkoff on her What To Expect book series and has written for The Washington Post, Parenting Magazine, Baby Talk Magazine, and of course, WhatToExpect.com. Before becoming a mom she was a TV writer and producer at NBC News, FOX News, and WPIX-NY.

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WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

Music may soothe the savage beast, but it also seems to help preemies. That's according to a new study published today in the journal Pediatrics, which found that singing or playing lullabies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) helps slow the heart rates of premature babies and calms their breathing, while also boosting their sleeping and eating patterns. And it's not only melodies that work, say researchers. Even sounds that mimic a mom's heartbeat or the whoosh of fluid in the womb can help improve preemies' health.

Researchers at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York looked at 272 preemies being treated at 11 NICUs that had music therapists. Over a two-week period, moms and dads sang to their tiny babies or the therapists played womb-like sounds for ten minutes. The researchers compared the vital signs and eating and sleeping patterns of the preemies during those "concerts" to times when no sounds were played. They found that babies' heart rates dropped by one or two beats per minute while they listened to the lullaby. Sucking rates sped up when they heard heartbeat sounds and there was noticeable improvement in sleep patterns after the babies heard the womb-like noises.

If your little one was born too early and is in the NICU, it's easy for you to put these study results to use... even if there isn't a music therapist in your hospital. Sing a lullaby to your baby, hold your cutie skin-to-skin over your heart so she can hear the lub-dub of your ticker, and make "ahh" noises to mimic the sounds your precious one heard in the womb. Remember, your baby had been hearing your voices for weeks during pregnancy, so hearing it now, when she's in your arms, helps improve her well-being by allowing her to devote more oxygen and calorie intake on developing and growing. It also is a great stress reliever — not only for her, but also for you.

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